Keiller was born in 1950, in Blackpool and studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.
In 1979 he joined the Royal College of Art's Department of Environmental Media as a postgraduate student.
This was a technique that was further refined in his longer films London (1994) and Robinson in Space (1997), both of which are narrated by an unnamed character (voiced by Paul Scofield) who accompanies his friend and onetime lover, the unseen Robinson, in a series of excursions around London.
It was one of the outcomes of a three-year research project entitled The Future of Landscape and the Moving Image.
It features the voice of Tilda Swinton, and its subject matter is the state of the UK's housing.